Apple has issued a surprise patent for technology that would allow iPhones to squirt water from their speaker ports.
The patent, titled 'Liquid Expulsion From An Orifice', details how future phones could use electrical charges to push water out of their speakers to try to prevent damage to their interior.
According to the International Business Times, the feature would be activated once water was detected by "pressure, optical or moisture" sensors.
The patent, which was accepted by the US Patent and Trademark Office last week, adds another level of water resistance by deploying a negative electric charge on a protective screen mesh on the outside of the speakers, which would help to stop water from entering the device in the first place.
Another technique the patent proposes uses sound waves to "blast" water from the phone's orifices.
Apple has not yet indicated that its future phones will be waterproof, but these patents – together with others published in March for "hydrophobic coatings" for internal components – indicate that the company may be heading in that direction.
However, Apple has a history of using the US patent office to plant red herrings for its competitors "as with many of Apple's patent applications and filings, it's unknown if or when it plans to implement the feature in one of its products", the IB Times says.
Luke Dormehl, at Cult of Mac, describes the idea of self-drying iPhones as a "crazy" invention.
"It all sounds impressively high-tech, and – hey – if it was another step toward protecting us from accidental water damage on our iPhones, it's absolutely a feature I'd love to see Apple add for a next-generation iPhone," he says.
IPhones built after 2006 have a built-in 'liquid contact indicator', which shows whether the device has been in contact with water or a liquid containing water. The indicator is normally white or silver, but turns red if it gets wet.
One survey by Mobilephonechecker.co.uk suggested that a third of broken iPhones were damaged by falling into water, such as a toilet, sink or bath.
This was the second most common cause of damage. The main cause of damage was dropping the device on a hard surface, while others had stood or sat on their phones.
Of the 1,486 UK adults surveyed, 12 per cent said they had left their phone on the roof of a car, ten per cent said it had been broken by a child and one woman said she had dropped her phone into a blender by accident.
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